Baby monitoring systems

ABSTRACT

There is provided a baby monitoring system comprising a baby unit and a parent unit, the baby unit being for use in the vicinity of a baby or child, the baby unit detecting noise and transmitting a corresponding stream of audio samples to the parent unit, the parent unit comprising a visual indicator; and a processor for analyzing the stream of audio samples to determine a noise history and for providing a first control signal to the visual indicator such that the visual indicator provides a visual indication of the noise history.

TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The invention relates to baby monitoring systems, and in particular tobaby monitoring systems that provide an indication of noise or activityof a baby or child from a baby unit to a parent unit.

BACKGROUND TO THE INVENTION

Baby monitoring systems are becoming increasingly popular, and thesesystems generally comprise a baby unit that is placed close to a baby orchild to be monitored, and a parent unit that communicates with the babyunit to provide a parent with information about the status of theirbaby. For example, the most common baby monitor systems have amicrophone in the baby unit for picking up sounds (such as the babycrying), and these sounds are sent to the parent unit where they arebroadcast for the parent to hear.

In many of these baby monitoring systems, the parent unit is alsoprovided with a visual indicator, such as a series of lights, that givesthe parent a visual indication of the level of noise or activity at thebaby unit.

One such example is the Philips SCD499 baby monitor, in which a seriesof LEDs are provided on the parent unit to indicate if the baby has madea noise or cries. As the volume of noise made by the baby increases,more LEDs on the parent unit are switched on.

However, these monitoring systems suffer from the disadvantage that itis easy to miss an indication (whether visual or audible) that the babyhas made a noise or has cried if the parent is away from the parent unitbriefly (for example getting coffee from the kitchen or going into thegarden), or if there is other ambient noise around the parent and/or ifthe parent unit is not directly in the parent's line of sight (forexample when the parent is watching television).

It is therefore desirable to provide a baby monitoring system that doesnot suffer from this disadvantage.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Thus, in accordance with the invention, there is provided a babymonitoring system comprising a baby unit and a parent unit, the babyunit being for use in the vicinity of a baby or child, the baby unitdetecting noise and transmitting a corresponding stream of audio samplesto the parent unit, the parent unit comprising a visual indicator; and aprocessor for analyzing the stream of audio samples to determine a noisehistory and for providing a first control signal to the visual indicatorsuch that the visual indicator provides a visual indication of the noisehistory.

Preferably, the parent unit further comprises a second visual indicator,and the processor is further adapted to analyze the stream of audiosignals to determine a current noise level and to provide a respectivecontrol signal to the second visual indicator such that the secondvisual indicator provides a visual indication of the current noiselevel.

Alternatively, the processor is further adapted to analyze the stream ofaudio signals to determine a current noise level and to provide a secondcontrol signal to the visual indicator such that the visual indicatorfurther provides a visual indication of the current noise level.

In this embodiment, the visual indicator provides a first visualindication for the noise history and a second visual indication for thecurrent noise level.

Preferably, the visual indicator comprises a plurality of lights or LEDsand the visual indication comprises none or one or more illuminatedlights or LEDs.

Preferably, each light or LED corresponds to a period of time, and theprocessor is adapted to generate the first control signal such that arespective light or LED is illuminated in the event that the noisehistory indicates a noise occurred in the respective correspondingperiod of time.

In alternative embodiments, the visual indicator comprises a LCD panel.

Preferably, the noise history comprises an indication of the level ofnoise during one or more time periods.

Preferably, the parent unit further comprises a memory for storing thedetermined noise history.

Preferably, the parent unit further comprises a speaker, and theprocessor is further adapted to convert the audio samples into sound forplaying through the speaker.

In accordance with a second aspect of the invention, there is provided amethod of operating a parent unit in a baby monitoring system, themethod comprising receiving a plurality of audio samples; analyzing theaudio samples to determine a noise history; and providing an indicationof the noise history to a user of the parent unit.

Preferably, the step of providing an indication of the noise historycomprises providing a visual indication of the noise history.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention will now be described, by way of example only, withreference to the following drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a baby monitoring system in accordance withthe invention;

FIG. 2 is a graphical illustration of a situation in which the presentinvention can be used; and

FIG. 3 illustrates the operation of the invention with reference to avisual indicator that comprises ten LEDs.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

FIG. 1 shows a block diagram of a baby monitoring system 2 in accordancewith an aspect of the invention. The system comprises a transmissionunit 4 in the form of a baby unit that is placed in the vicinity of ababy or child to be monitored, and a receiving unit 6 that is carried orused by a parent remotely from the baby unit 4.

The baby unit 4 comprises a microphone 8 for recording audio in thevicinity of the baby unit 4, and one or more other sensors 10 forsensing conditions at the baby unit 4, such as temperature. The audiofrom the microphone 8 and data from the sensors 10 is provided totransmitter circuitry 12 which transmits the audio and data tocorresponding receiver circuitry 14 in the parent unit 6.

The receiver circuitry 14 provides the received audio and data to asimple processor 16 that controls the parent unit 6. The audio isprovided by the processor 16 to a speaker 18 for presentation to a userof the parent unit 6. In addition, the processor 16 converts thereceived audio samples into a visual representation, and provides thisvisual representation to a visual indicator 20.

As is conventional, the visual indicator 20 can comprise a series oflights or LEDs, with the number of lights or LEDs illuminated increasingas the level of noise (i.e. the volume of noises such as crying) in theaudio stream increases. In this type of visual indicator, each light orLED can have an associated noise threshold, which means that thatparticular light or LED will be lit when the noise in the audio streamexceeds that threshold. Therefore, when the visual indicator 20comprises, say, ten lights, and the level of noise in the audio streamis below all thresholds, no lights will be lit. However, when the levelof noise is above the highest threshold, all ten lights will be lit. Ifthe level of noise falls between the highest and lowest thresholds, anappropriate number of lights or LEDs will be lit.

A slight modification to this scheme is possible by which only one lightor LED is lit, with the particular light or LED being lit based on thelevel of noise in the audio stream.

In either case, the processor 16 can analyze the received audio streamto determine which noise thresholds have been exceeded and provide theappropriate control signals to the visual indicator 20.

Although the visual indicator 20 can be a simple series or lights, itwill be appreciated that it is possible for the visual indicator 20 tobe a more complex component, such as an LCD panel.

In accordance with the invention, the parent unit 6 further comprises amemory 22 for storing a recent noise history from the baby unit 4. Theprocessor 16 determines the recent noise history from the received audiosamples, and stores the noise history in the memory 22. The processor 16uses this stored noise history to generate an additional control signalfor a visual indicator that controls the visual indicator to provide avisual indication of the noise history.

The processor 16 can determine the noise history by analyzing the audiosamples to determine the maximum noise level for a particular time unit(which does not have to correspond to the sampling interval used by thebaby unit 4 to generate the audio sample stream).

In preferred embodiments, another visual indicator 30 provides thevisual indication of the recent noise history at the same time as visualindicator 20 provides the visual indication of the current noise level.As with visual indicator 20, this additional visual indicator 30 cancomprise a series of lights or LEDs, or can be a more complex component,such as an LCD panel. When the visual indicator 30 comprises a series oflights or LEDs, each light or LED preferably represents and shows thenoise history for a particular period of time (for example a minute).If, say, the visual indicator 30 comprises five lights or LEDs, eachlight or LED can correspond to one minute in the preceding five minutes.

In alternative embodiments, there may be a single visual indicator 20that provides the visual indication of the noise history only whenselected by a user of the parent unit 6 (for example if a “noisehistory” function is selected by the user), and indicates the currentnoise level at all other times.

Preferably, the memory 22 only stores the noise history covering a shortperiod of time, say ten minutes. In this case, for each of the tenminutes that have elapsed, the memory 22 contains the maximum noiselevel reached. Of course, as time passes, the memory 22 will be updatedby removing the “oldest” maximum noise level.

FIG. 2 is a graphical illustration of a situation in which the presentinvention can be used. In this example, at time 2 and 3, the baby makesa noise that registers at levels 6 and 8 respectively. If the parentleaves the room at time 10 and returns at time 15, he/she will havemissed the noises that occurred at times 12 and 14.

However, in accordance with the invention, the noise levels at times 12and 14 (and 2 and 3 if the memory 22 is large enough) will be stored inthe memory 22, and the processor 16 can use this stored history toprovide an appropriate control signal to the visual indicator 30.

FIG. 3 illustrates the operation of the invention with reference to avisual indicator 30 that comprises ten LEDs. In FIG. 3( a), the visualindicator 20 is indicating a noise history that corresponds to thatshown by the graph in FIG. 2.

In particular, in this example, the right-most LED corresponds to thenoise level in the previous minute, whereas the left-most LEDcorresponds to the noise level in the earliest recorded minute (so tenminutes ago). Therefore, at time 15 in FIG. 2, the seventh and ninthLEDs (counted from the left) of the visual indicator 30 will be lit,indicating that a noise occurred at time 12 (three minutes ago) and time14 (one minute ago).

As time elapses, the light pattern shown by the visual indicator 30 canshift to the left at the rate of one LED per minute. Thus, one minuteafter the visual indication in FIG. 3( a), the sixth and eighth LEDs inthe visual indicator 30 will be lit, as shown in FIG. 3( b), rather thanthe seventh and ninth LEDs.

In further embodiments, the colors of the lights or LEDs indicatingrespective noise levels (whether historic noise levels or current noiselevels) can be different. For example, LEDs indicating a low noise levelcan be green, LEDs indicating intermediate noise levels can be orange,while LEDs indicating higher noise levels can be red.

As described above, in embodiments of the invention in which the visualindicator 30 is an LCD panel, the visual indication of the historicnoise level can be presented as a graph (similar to that shown in FIG.2) or in any other suitable format. For example, the LCD display canshow the noise level as a series of bars that operate in a similar wayto the series of lights described above.

It will be appreciated that the processor 16 can analyze the storednoise history and generate the control signal by executing anappropriate software program stored in the memory 22 or within theprocessor 16 itself. It will further be appreciated that the processor16 can include a timer module for determining how long particular noiselevels are to be stored in the memory 22.

There is therefore provided a baby monitoring system that overcomes thedisadvantages with conventional baby monitoring systems.

While the invention has been illustrated and described in detail in thedrawings and foregoing description, such illustration and descriptionare to be considered illustrative or exemplary and not restrictive; theinvention is not limited to the disclosed embodiments.

Variations to the disclosed embodiments can be understood and effectedby those skilled in the art in practicing the claimed invention, from astudy of the drawings, the disclosure, and the appended claims. In theclaims, the word “comprising” does not exclude other elements or steps,and the indefinite article “a” or “an” does not exclude a plurality. Asingle processor or other unit may fulfill the functions of severalitems recited in the claims. The mere fact that certain measures arerecited in mutually different dependent claims does not indicate that acombination of these measured cannot be used to advantage. Any referencesigns in the claims should not be construed as limiting the scope. Acomputer program may be stored/distributed on a suitable medium, such asan optical storage medium or a solid-state medium supplied together withor as part of other hardware, but may also be distributed in otherforms, such as via the Internet or other wired or wirelesstelecommunication systems.

1. A baby monitoring system comprising a baby unit and a parent unit,the baby unit being for use in the vicinity of a baby or child, the babyunit detecting noise and transmitting a corresponding stream of audiosamples to the parent unit, the parent unit comprising: a visualindicator; and a processor for analyzing the stream of audio samples todetermine a noise history including a maximum noise level for each of aplurality of time periods and for providing a first control signal tothe visual indicator such that the visual indicator provides a visualindication of the maximum noise level for each of the plurality of timeperiods.
 2. The baby monitoring system as claimed in claim 1, whereinthe parent unit further comprises a second visual indicator, and theprocessor is further adapted to analyze the stream of audio signals todetermine a current noise level and to provide a respective controlsignal to the second visual indicator such that the second visualindicator provides a visual indication of the current noise level. 3.The baby monitoring system as claimed in claim 1, wherein the processoris further adapted to analyze the stream of audio signals to determine acurrent noise level and to provide a second control signal to the visualindicator such that the visual indicator further provides a visualindication of the current noise level.
 4. The baby monitoring system asclaimed in claim 3, wherein the visual indicator provides a first visualindication for the noise history and a second visual indication for thecurrent noise level.
 5. The baby monitoring system as claimed in claim1, wherein the visual indicator comprises a plurality of lights or LightEmitting diodes (LEDs) and the visual indication comprises none or oneor more illuminated lights or LEDs.
 6. The baby monitoring system asclaimed in claim 5, wherein each light or LED corresponds to a period oftime, and the processor is adapted to generate the first control signalsuch that a respective light or LED is illuminated in the event that thenoise history indicates a noise occurred in the respective correspondingperiod of time.
 7. The baby monitoring system as claimed in claim 1,wherein the visual indicator comprises a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)panel.
 8. The baby monitoring system as claimed in claim 1, wherein thevisual indicator comprises a plurality of lights or Light Emittingdiodes (LEDs) and colors of the lights or LEDs indicate respective noiselevels as the visual indication of the maximum noise level during one ormore time periods.
 9. The baby monitoring system as claimed in claim 8,wherein the processor is configured to control the visual indicator to:provide a green color to indicate a low noise level during a given timeperiod, provide an orange color to indicate an intermediate noise levelduring a given time period, and provide a red color to indicate a noiselevel higher than the intermediate noise level during a given timeperiod.
 10. The baby monitoring system as claimed in claim 1, whereinthe parent unit further comprises a speaker, and the processor isfurther adapted to convert the audio samples into sound for playingthrough the speaker.
 11. A method of operating a parent unit in a babymonitoring system, the method comprising: receiving a plurality of audiosamples; analyzing the audio samples to determine a noise historyincluding a maximum noise level for each of a plurality of time periods;and providing an indication of the maximum noise level for each of theplurality of time periods to a user of the parent unit.
 12. The methodas claimed in claim 11, wherein the step of providing an indication ofthe noise history comprises providing a visual indication of the noisehistory.